A Voyage Round My Father

by John Mortimer

MORGENHALL. Selected.

  FOWLE. But I didn’t know …

  MORGENHALL. No, Mr Fowle. That’s the whole beauty of it. You didn’t know me. You came to me under a system of chance invented, like the football pools, to even out the harsh inequality of a world where you have to deserve success. You, Mr Fowle, are my first Dock Brief.

  FOWLE. Your Dock?

  MORGENHALL. Brief.

  FOWLE. You couldn’t explain?

  MORGENHALL. Of course. Prisoners with no money and no friends exist. Luckily, you’re one of them. They’re entitled to choose any barrister sitting in Court to defend them. The barrister, however old, gets a brief, and is remunerated on a modest scale. Busy lawyers, wealthy lawyers, men with other interests, creep out of Court bent double when the Dock Brief is chosen. We regulars who are not busy sit on. I’ve been a regular for years. It’s not etiquette, you see, even if you want the work, to wave at the prisoner, or whistle, or try to catch his eye by hoisting any sort of little flag.

  FOWLE. Didn’t know.

  MORGENHALL. But you can choose the most advantageous seat. The seat any criminal would naturally point at. It’s the seat under the window and for ten years my old friend Tuppy Morgan bagged it each day at ten. He sat there, reading Horace, and writing to his innumerable aunts, and almost once a year a criminal pointed him out. Oh, Mr Fowle, Tuppy was a limpet on that seat. But this morning, something, possibly a cold, perhaps death, kept him indoors. So I had his place. And you spotted me, no doubt.

  FOWLE. Spotted you?

  MORGENHALL. My glass polished. My profile drawn and learned in front of the great window.

  FOWLE. I never noticed.

  MORGENHALL. But when they asked you to choose a lawyer?

  FOWLE. I shut my eyes and pointed – I’ve picked horses that way, and football teams. Never did me any good, though, by any stretch of the imagination.

  MORGENHALL. So even you, Mr Fowle, didn’t choose me?

  FOWLE. Not altogether.

  MORGENHALL. The Law’s a haphazard business.

  FOWLE. It does seem chancy.

  MORGENHALL. Years of training, and then to be picked out like a football pool.

  FOWLE. Don’t take it badly sir.

  MORGENHALL. Of course, you’ve been fortunate.

  FOWLE. So unusual. I was never one to draw the free bird at Christmas, or guess the weight of the cake. Now I’m sorry I told you.

  MORGENHALL. Never mind. You hurt me temporarily, Fowle, I must confess. It might have been kinder to have kept me in ignorance. But now it’s done. Let’s get down to business. And, Fowle –

  FOWLE. Yes, sir.

  MORGENHALL. Remember you’re dealing with fellow man. A man no longer young. Remember the hopes I’ve pinned on you and try …

  FOWLE. Try?

  MORGENHALL. Try to spare me more pain.

  FOWLE. I will, sir. Of course I will.

  MORGENHALL. Now. Let’s get our minds in order.

  FOWLE. Sort things out?

  MORGENHALL. Exactly. Now, this wife of yours.

  FOWLE. Doris?

  MORGENHALL. Doris. A bitter, unsympathetic woman?

  FOWLE. She was always cheerful. She loved jokes.

  MORGENHALL. Oh, Fowle. Do be very careful.

  FOWLE. I will, sir. But if you’d known Doris … She laughed harder than she worked. ‘Thank God,’ she’d say, ‘for my old English sense of fun.’

  MORGENHALL. What sort of jokes, Fowle, did this Doris appreciate?

  FOWLE. All sorts. Pictures in the paper. Jokes on the wireless set. Laughs out of crackers, she’d keep them from Christmas to Christmas and trot them out in August.

  MORGENHALL. You couldn’t share it?

  FOWLE. Not to that extent. I often missed the funny point.

  MORGENHALL. Then you’d quarrel?

  FOWLE. ‘Don’t look so miserable, it may never happen.’ She said that every night when I came home. ‘Where’d you get that miserable expression from?’

  MORGENHALL. I can see it now. There is a kind of Sunday evening appearance to you.

  FOWLE. I was quite happy. But it was always ‘Cat got your tongue?’ ‘Where’s the funeral?’ ‘Play us a tune on that old fiddle face of yours. Lucky there’s one of us here that can see the funny side.’ Then we had to have our tea with the wireless on, so that she’d pick up the phrases.

  MORGENHALL. You’re not a wireless lover?

  FOWLE. I couldn’t always laugh. And she’d be doubled up across the table, gasping as if her lungs were full of water. ‘Laugh,’ she’d call, ‘Laugh, damn you. What’ve you got to be so miserable about?’ Then she’d go under, bubbling like a drowning woman.

  MORGENHALL. Made meals difficult?

  FOWLE. Indigestible. I would have laughed, but the jokes never tickled me.

  MORGENHALL. They tickled her?

  FOWLE. Anything did. Anything a little comic. Our names were misfortunate.

  MORGENHALL. Your names?

  FOWLE. Fowle. Going down the aisle she said: ‘Now we’re cock and hen, aren’t we, old bird?’ Coming away, it was ‘Now I’m Mrs Fowle, you’ll have to play fair with me.’ She laughed so hard we couldn’t get her straightened up for the photograph.

  MORGENHALL. Fond of puns, I gather you’re trying to say.

  FOWLE. Of any sort of joke. I had a little aviary at the bottom of my garden. As she got funnier so I spent more time with my birds. Budgerigars are small parrots. Circles round their eyes give them a sad, tired look.

  MORGENHALL. You found them sympathetic?

  FOWLE. Restful. Until one of them spoke out at me.

  MORGENHALL. Spoke – what words?

  FOWLE. ‘Don’t look so miserable, it may never happen.’

  MORGENHALL. The bird said that?

  FOWLE. She taught it during the day when I was out at work. It didn’t mean to irritate.

  MORGENHALL. It was wrong of her of course. To lead on your bird like that.

  FOWLE. But it wasn’t him that brought me to it. It was Bateson, the lodger.

  MORGENHALL. Another man?

  FOWLE. At long last.

  MORGENHALL. I can see it now. A crime of passion. An unfaithful wife. In flagrante … Of course, you don’t know what that means. We’ll reduce it to manslaughter right away. A wronged husband and there’s never a dry eye in the jury box. You came in and caught them.

  FOWLE. Always laughing together.

  MORGENHALL. Maddening!

  FOWLE. He knew more jokes than she did.

  MORGENHALL. Stealing her before your eyes?

  FOWLE. That’s what I thought. He was a big man. Ex-police. Said he’d been the scream of the station. I picked him for her specially. In the chitty I put up in the local sweet shop, I wrote: ‘Humorous type of lodger wanted.’

  MORGENHALL. But wasn’t that a risk?

  FOWLE. Slight, perhaps. But it went all right. Two days after he came he poised a bag of flour to fall on her in the kitchen. Then she sewed up the legs of his pyjamas. They had to hold on to each other so as not to fall over laughing. ‘Look at old misery standing there,’ she said. ‘He can never see anything subtle.’

  MORGENHALL. Galling for you. Terribly galling.

  FOWLE. I thought all was well. I spent more time with the birds. I’d come home late and always be careful to scrunch the gravel at the front door. I went to bed early and left them with the Light Programme. On Sunday mornings I fed the budgies and suggested he took her tea in bed. ‘Laughter,’ she read out from her horoscope, ‘leads to love, even for those born under the sign of the Virgin.’

  MORGENHALL. You trusted them. They deceived you.

  FOWLE. They deceived me all right. And I trusted them. Especially after I’d seen her on his knee and them both looking at the cartoons from one wrapping of chips.

  MORGENHALL. Mr Fowle. I’m not quite getting the drift of your evidence. My hope is – your thought may not prove a shade too involved for our literal-minded judge. Old Tommy Banter was a Rugger blu
e in ’98. He never rose to chess and his draughts had a brutal, unintelligent quality.

  FOWLE. When he’d first put his knee under her I thought he’d do the decent thing. I thought I’d have peace in my little house at last. The wireless set dead silent. The end of all the happy laughter. No sound but the twitter from the end of the garden and the squeak of my own foot on the linoleum.

  MORGENHALL. You wanted …

  FOWLE. I heard them whispering together and my hopes raised high. Then I came back and he was gone.

  MORGENHALL. She’d …

  FOWLE. Turned him out. Because he was getting over familiar. ‘I couldn’t have that,’ she said. ‘I may like my laugh, but thank God, I’m still respectable. No thank you, there’s safety in marriage. So I’m stuck with you, fiddle face. Let’s play a tune on it, shall we?’ She’d sent him away, my last hope.

  MORGENHALL. So you …

  FOWLE. I realize I did wrong.

  MORGENHALL. You could have left.

  FOWLE. Who’d have fed the birds? That thought was uppermost.

  MORGENHALL. So it’s not a crime of passion?

  FOWLE. Not if you put it like that.

  MORGENHALL. Mr Fowle. I’ve worked and waited for you. Now, you’re the only case I’ve got, and the most difficult.

  FOWLE. I’m sorry.

  MORGENHALL. A man could crack his head against a case like you and still be far from a solution. Can’t you see how twelve honest hearts will snap like steel when they learn you ended up your wife because she wouldn’t leave you?

  FOWLE. If she had left, there wouldn’t have been the need.

  MORGENHALL. There’s no doubt about it. As I look at you now, I see you’re an unsympathetic figure.

  FOWLE. There it is.

  MORGENHALL. It’ll need a brilliant stroke to save you. An unexpected move – something pulled out of a hat – I’ve got it. Something really exciting. The surprise witness.

  FOWLE. Witness?

  MORGENHALL. Picture the scene, Mr Fowle. The Courtroom silent. The jury about to sink you. The prosecution flushed with victory. And then I rise, my voice a hoarse whisper, exhausted by that long trial. ‘My Lord. If your Lordship pleases.’

  FOWLE. What are you saying?

  MORGENHALL. Do you expect me to do this off the cuff, Fowle, with no sort of rehearsal?

  FOWLE. No …

  MORGENHALL. Take the stool and co-operate, man. Now, that towel over your head, please, to simulate the dirty grey wig – already you appear anonymous and vaguely alarming.

  MORGENHALL arranges FOWLE on the stool. Drapes the towel over his head.

  Now, my dear Fowle, forget your personality. You’re Sir Tommy Banter, living with a widowed sister in a draughty great morgue on Wimbledon Common. Digestion, bad. Politics, an Independent Moral Conservative. Favourite author, doesn’t read. Diversions, snooker in the basement of the morgue, peeping at the lovers on the Common and money being given away on the television. In love with capital punishment, corporal punishment, and a younger brother who is accomplished at embroidery. A small, alarmed man, frightened of the great dog he lives with to give him the air of a country squire. Served with distinction in the Great War at sentencing soldiers to long terms of imprisonment. A man without friends, unexpectedly adored by a great-niece, three years old.

  FOWLE. I am?

  MORGENHALL. Him.

  FOWLE. It feels strange.

  MORGENHALL. Now, my Lord. I ask your Lordship’s leave to call the surprise witness.

  FOWLE. Certainly.

  MORGENHALL. What?

  FOWLE. Certainly.

  MORGENHALL. For Heaven’s sake, Fowle, this is like practising bull-fights with a kitten. Here’s an irregular application by the defence, something that might twist the trial in the prisoner’s favour and prevent you catching the connection at Charing Cross. Your breakfast’s like a lead weight on your chest. Your sister, plunging at Spot last night, ripped the cloth. The dog bit your ankle on the way downstairs. No, blind yourself with rage and terrible justice.

  FOWLE. No. You can’t call the surprise witness.

  MORGENHALL. That’s better. Oh, my Lord. If your Lordship would listen to me.

  FOWLE. Certainly not. You’ve had your chance. Let’s get on with it.

  MORGENHALL. My Lord. Justice must not only be done, but must clearly be seen to be done. No one knows, as yet, what my surprise witness will say. Perhaps he’ll say the prisoner is guilty in his black heart as your Lordship thinks. But perhaps, gentlemen of the jury, we have trapped an innocent. If so, shall we deny him the one door through which he might walk to freedom? The public outcry would never die down.

  FOWLE (snatching off the towel and rising angrily to his feet). Hear, hear!

  MORGENHALL. What’s that?

  FOWLE. The public outcry.

  MORGENHALL. Excellent. Now, towel back on. You’re the judge.

  FOWLE (as the Judge). Silence! I’ll have all those noisy people put out. Very well. Call the witness. But keep it short.

  MORGENHALL. Wonderful. Very good. Now. Deathly silence as the witness walks through the breathless crowds. Let’s see the surprise witness. Take the towel off.

  FOWLE (moves from the stool and, standing very straight, says): I swear to tell the truth …

  MORGENHALL. You’ve got a real feeling for the Law. A pity you came to it so late in life.

  FOWLE. The whole truth.

  MORGENHALL. Now, what’s your name?

  FOWLE (absent minded). Herbert Fowle.

  MORGENHALL. No, no. You’re the witness.

  FOWLE. Martin Jones.

  MORGENHALL. Excellent. Now, you know Herbert Fowle?

  FOWLE. All my life.

  MORGENHALL. Always found him respectable?

  FOWLE. Very quiet-spoken man, and clean living.

  MORGENHALL. Where was he when this crime took place?

  FOWLE. He was …

  MORGENHALL. Just a moment. My Lord, will you sharpen a pencil and note this down?

  FOWLE. You’d dare to say that? To him?

  MORGENHALL. Fearlessness, Mr Fowle. The first essential in an advocate. Is your Lordship’s pencil poised?

  FOWLE (as Judge). Yes, yes. Get on with it.

  MORGENHALL. Where was he?

  FOWLE (as Witness). In my house.

  MORGENHALL. All the evening?

  FOWLE. Playing whist. I went to collect him and we left Mrs Fowle well and happy. I returned with him and she’d been removed to the Country and General.

  MORGENHALL. Panic stirs the prosecution benches. The prosecutor tries a few fumbling questions. But you stand your ground, don’t you?

  FOWLE. Certainly.

  MORGENHALL. My Lord. I demand the prisoner be released.

  FOWLE (as Judge). Certainly. Can’t think what all this fuss has been about. Release the prisoner, and reduce all police officers in Court to the rank of P.C.

  Pause.

  MORGENHALL. Fowle.

  FOWLE. Yes, sir.

  MORGENHALL. Aren’t you going to thank me?

  FOWLE. I don’t know what I can say.

  MORGENHALL. Words don’t come easily to you, do they?

  FOWLE. Very hard.

  MORGENHALL. You could just stand and stammer in a touching way and offer me that old gold watch of your father’s.

  FOWLE. But …

  MORGENHALL. Well, I think we’ve pulled your chestnuts out of the fire. We’ll just have to make sure of this fellow Jones.

  FOWLE. But …

  MORGENHALL. Fowle, you’re a good simple chap, but there’s no need to interrupt my thinking.

  FOWLE. I was only reminding you …

  MORGENHALL. Well, what?

  FOWLE. We have no Jones.

  MORGENHALL. Carried off in a cold spell? Then we can get his statement in under the Evidence Act.

  FOWLE. He never lived. We made him up.

  Pause.

  MORGENHALL. Fowle.

  FOWLE. Yes, sir.


  MORGENHALL. It’s remarkable a thing, but with no legal training, I think you’ve put your finger on a fatal weakness in our defence.

  FOWLE. I was afraid it might be so.

  MORGENHALL. It is so.

  FOWLE. Then we’d better just give in.

  MORGENHALL. Give in? We do not give in. When my life depends on this case.

  FOWLE. I forgot. Then, we must try.

  MORGENHALL. Yes. Brain! Brain! Go to work. It’ll come to me, you know, in an illuminating flash. Hard relentless brain work. This is the way I go at the crosswords and I never give up. I have it. Bateson!

  FOWLE. The lodger?

  MORGENHALL. Bateson, the lodger. I never liked him. Under a ruthless cross-examination, you know, he might confess that it was he. Do you see a flash?

  FOWLE. You look much happier.

  MORGENHALL. I am much happier. And when I begin my ruthless cross-examination …

  FOWLE. Would you care to try it?

  MORGENHALL. Mr Fowle. You and I are learning to muck in splendidly together over this. Mr Bateson.

  FOWLE (as Bateson, lounging in an imaginary witness box with his hands in his pockets). Yes. Sir?

  MORGENHALL. Perhaps, when you address the Court, you’d be good enough to take your hands out of your pockets. Not you Mr Fowle, of course. You became on very friendly terms with the prisoner’s wife?

  FOWLE. We had one or two good old laughs together.

  MORGENHALL. Was the association entirely innocent?

  FOWLE. Innocent laughs. Jokes without offence. The cracker or Christmas card variety. No jokes that would have shamed a postcard.

  MORGENHALL. And to tell those innocent jokes, did you have to sit very close to Mrs Fowle?

  FOWLE. How do you mean?

  MORGENHALL. Did you have to sit beneath her?

  FOWLE. I don’t understand.

  MORGENHALL. Did she perch upon your knee?

  FOWLE (horrified intake of breath).

  MORGENHALL. What was that?

  FOWLE. Shocked breathing from the jury, sir.

  MORGENHALL. Having its effect, eh? Now, Mr Bateson. Will you kindly answer my question.

  FOWLE. You’re trying to trap me.

  MORGENHALL. Not trying, Bateson, succeeding.

  FOWLE. Well, she may have rested on my knee. Once or twice.

  MORGENHALL. And you loved her, guiltily?